


Son of a Bitch

by Sorran



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Family, Keepsakes, Lies, M/M, Rickyl Writers' Group
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 01:46:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6353986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorran/pseuds/Sorran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl discovers Merle's biggest lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Son of a Bitch

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by one of my own prompts that [Higgystar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Higgystar/pseuds/Higgystar) [beautifully brought to life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3789727/chapters/8434963).
> 
> Thanks as always to amazing beta reader [MermaidSheenaz](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MermaidSheenaz/pseuds/MermaidSheenaz%22) and her pink highlighter.

“Sonofabitch!”

Daryl’s fist crashes into the wall, making Rick jump and the fine art prints that were put up by whatever wealthy family used to call their new place home rattle on their hooks.

Cursing under his breath, Rick drops his book and rushes over to lift a startled and wailing Judith out of her playpen. 

“The hell’s gotten into you, man?”, he grouses, shooting Daryl an angry look while trying to soothe his sobbing daughter. 

It’s as if he’s not even there. Ignoring both Rick and the shrieking toddler, Daryl picks up a small reading lamp and hurls it across the room. “That stupid, lying son of a bitch!” he snarls. Judith’s cries promptly grow even shriller and louder.

“Daryl!” Rick shouts over Judith’s sobs, and then watches with a frown as Daryl crosses the room in three long strides, snatches his crossbow from its hook by the door and storms out.

His partner is already half way across the front lawn by the time Rick makes it out onto the porch. 

“Daryl!” he calls again, and Daryl freezes on the lawn.

“Don’t”, he rasps, not even turning to look at Rick.

The constable stops in his tracks. “Daryl, come on man, talk to me”, he pleads, resettling Judith on his hip.

“Ain’t nothing to talk about”, Daryl shakes his head, still refusing to look at Rick. “Just need ta get outta here for a while. Be back tonight.” With that he continues on toward the gate, head down, face hidden behind the curtain of his messy hair.

Rick knows better than to try to follow Daryl, so he turns to head back inside instead. Once he has Judith calmed down and settled in her playpen again, he surveys the damage. The lamp is broken beyond repair, shards of glass everywhere, and Rick’ll be damned if he knows what to do about the fist-sized dent in the wall. What bothers him most though is that he can’t figure out what upset Daryl in the first place.

Scanning the room again, Rick’s eyes fall on a pile of papers scattered across the coffee table. There is an envelope addressed to Merle Dixon, a grubby birth certificate and a couple of dog-eared, yellowed photos showing a young teenager holding a baby that Rick realises with a start must be Merle and Daryl. Sentimental keepsakes for sure, but nothing that seems to warrant Daryl’s outburst.

And then Rick sees it. Daryl Daniels Dixon, born January 6th, 1969, in Cleveland, White County, Georgia, mother unknown, father Merle William Dixon.

“Son of a bitch”, Rick mutters softly.

~~~~~

At first Daryl doesn’t pay much attention to where he’s going, his only goal being to get away from Alexandria’s walls, physical and otherwise. His head’s a mess, thoughts buzzing like a swarm of angry wasps looking for the enemy and failing to find a target to strike. Still, Daryl doesn’t have a death wish, so once he leaves the immediate vicinity of the safe zone, he slows down enough to be able to hear more than just the pounding of his blood in his ears.

He shouldn't have opened that damn letter. Hell, maybe he shouldn't have taken it from Merle's body in the first place, but he saw the pictures peek out of Merle's shirt pocket and just couldn't bring himself to bury them with his brother. He shoved them and the envelope they were attached to into his own pocket, and that was that. He looks at the photos occasionally, but never thought to open the envelope until the date on the post stamp - his birthday - caught his attention earlier. 

Merle lied to him. That in itself ain’t nothing new. Half of the shit that used to come out of Merle’s mouth was bullshit at best, but this is different. This is fucking personal. This is everything Daryl’s ever known to be true about his life turning out to be a fucking lie. 

And - fuck him sideways. It’s bad enough he never did anything more than follow his brother around like some lost puppy. Daryl snorts almost hysterically. Here he’d always prided himself on his independence, and it turns out he’d been trailing after his _father_ for most of the goddamned time.

The thought that Merle was the one who stayed, that his parents - grandparents, Daryl corrects himself mentally - were the ones who cared enough to take him in and raise him is more fucked up than the dead coming back to life. He fleetingly wonders how many of the scars on Merle’s body had been there simply because Daryl existed when the implications of his train of thought catch up with him, and he freezes. 

His own mother had wanted him even less than abusive, piece-of-shit Will Dixon.

Before Daryl can so much as try to process that realisation, the tell-tale rasping moans of a walker pull him out of his temporary paralysis. Reaching for his crossbow, he automatically scans the tree-line to his left, where the sounds are coming from, until his eyes land on a shambling figure stumbling through the undergrowth. It keeps weaving in and out of the deeper shadows under the trees, never quite giving Daryl a clear shot, so he waits. Then the walker finally steps out into the open, and Daryl stares.

It can’t be. 

Daryl blinks hard. It can’t be, and yet the walker keeps coming at him, slow, dragging step by slow, dragging step. Khaki pants, an open, faded black shirt, a once-white wife-beater and the biggest shit-eating grin frozen on its half-rotted face that Daryl has ever seen. 

No. Daryl shakes his head. He must be hallucinatin’, like he was back at the creek when he was searchin’ for Sophia. This ain’t real. 

Fuck if his mind hasn’t updated his hallucinations though.

It isn’t until the walker grabs for the crossbow with its hands - _both_ hands - that Daryl snaps out of his trance with a start. Snatching the bow out of the rotter’s grasp, he hastily backs up a few steps, then swings the crossbow with all the force he can muster.

The walker staggers backwards, and that shit-eating grin just falls off its face. Daryl has a split-second to reflect that this is the first time he has ever _actually_ wiped a grin off of someone’s face, then the geek comes at him again, jaws snapping. Daryl drops the bow, pulls the knife from the sheath at his hip and dives in.

One hand goes into the short gray hair, the other drives his knife through an eye, and the _lying bastard_ gets what he deserves. Daryl yanks his knife from the eye socket with gritted teeth and watches the biter crumple at his feet. Then he goes down on one knee next to the carcass and quite deliberately plunges the knife back into its skull.

“That’s for lying to me, you asshole”, he hisses. Rips the knife back out and stabs it in again. “That’s for leaving me with that abusive son of a bitch.” Out, and back in. “If you were my father”, Daryl growls, “it was _your_ fucking job to bring me up, you lazy fuck!” Out, in. “You fucking knew he beat me, and you still left me with him! Fuck!” 

With a parting kick Daryl finally wrenches himself away from the mangled, bloody mess and shakily pushes himself to his feet. Chest heaving, he stares at the mutilated body of the stranger who had the misfortune to look like Merle, and vaguely thinks that he is even more fucked up than he ever imagined.

Merle may not have been a great father to him, but he was a better one than Will Dixon ever had been, lies and abandonment notwithstanding.

Shaking his head at himself, Daryl gives his knife a perfunctory wipe on his trouser leg before sheathing it with less than steady hands and reaching for his crossbow.

~~~~~

After that he keeps moving. He doesn’t have a goal, and he isn’t tracking anything apart from maybe his sanity, either, but his feet find a deer path and follow it, and before he knows it he’s on two does and a fawn grazing in a small clearing upwind from him. Within seconds he's loaded a bolt into the crossbow, assessed both does to be of breeding age and taken aim at the fawn. It isn't until after he's released the bolt that he remembers he isn't actually out hunting, doesn't really need to kill for their next meal. 

By the time he lowers the crossbow with a sigh, the two does have spooked, leaving the dead fawn behind. Looking around to make sure that the fawn's cut-off bleat didn't attract any unwanted attention, Daryl stalks over and retrieves his bolt. He makes short work of field-dressing his kill, then hefts it over his shoulder with a huff. It’s not what he came out here to do, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to let it go to waste. 

Checking the sun for direction, Daryl hesitates, indecision gnawing at him the way he chews his thumbnail when he's nervous. He can’t stay here - the smell of the discarded innards will attract _something_ sooner or later - and with the added burden of the dead fawn he’d be stupid to head out any further.

 _‘Wouldn’t be the first time you did something stupid, baby brother’_ , Merle’s voice whispers unbidden in the back of his mind.

 _‘Oh, look who’s talking_ \- Dad’, Daryl thinks back furiously. 

Then he shrugs the fawn into a more comfortable position and sets off in the general direction of the safe zone. Fuck that asshole, and fuck this shit. The only thing woolgathering and moping out here is likely to achieve is to get him killed, and he's not ready to lay down his arms and die just yet, no matter how much he thinks his life sucks ass sometimes. 

_‘That's my boy’_ , comes Merle’s voice again, and Daryl has to blink away the tears pricking his eyes at the sudden memory of telling Merle to fuck off, he ain't Daryl’s father. 

~~~~~

“Wanna talk about it?” Rick offers when Daryl comes home.

Daryl shakes his head. “It don’t matter anymore”, he shrugs, dropping his jacket, boots and clothes where he stands.

Rick doesn’t push him.

Clearly it does matter though, because when Daryl lets himself fall on the side of the bed he reaches for the birth certificate now sitting on the nightstand. 

"'Mother unknown'", he mutters, running his fingers over the grubby paper. "What does that even mean?” He punches the headboard in frustration. “She was there! Surely _somebody_ would’ve asked her name!” Even if Merle didn’t, which is a distinct possibility. But Daryl’s fairly sure his mother wouldn't have been able to give birth anywhere and walk away without having to give a name. “Or did she just dump me on the fucking porch?!” That’s a possibility, too. Daryl punches the bed again. Fuck Merle for never telling him the truth.

“It means…” Rick squirms under the blankets, wishing there was a nice way to say this. “It probably means someone paid good money to keep her name off the birth certificate”, he finishes quietly.

Daryl flinches a little at that, crumples the offending birth certificate in his hands and tosses it into the waste paper basket with a snarl. Then he joins Rick under the blanket and for once doesn’t grumble when the other man wraps his arms around him, damn cuddler that he is.

Although the rumpled document is no longer in the bin when Rick empties it a few days later, they never speak of it again.


End file.
